A New York appeals court last week revived Assured Guaranty Corp’s claims for damages in its lawsuit against Credit Suisse Group AG concerning $1.8 billion in residential MBS. New York’s Appellate Division, First Department, unanimously reversed a trial court’s decision dismissing Assured Guaranty Municipal Corp.’s claims for rescissory and consequential damages in an action against Credit Suisse. Assured filed...
Greater standardization and transparency is needed to overcome the impediments to growing a new issue, non-agency MBS market, according to Michael Stegman, housing finance policy adviser to Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew. In remarks this week at the JP Morgan Securitized Products Research Conference, Stegman said lack of housing finance reform, lingering distrust among non-agency securitizers, lack of product and the trauma of heavy losses have stunted the growth of the market. The lack of reform of the government-sponsored enterprises should not become...
A few weeks back, Rep. Mark Takano, D-CA, called for Congressional hearings on the single-family rental MBS market, singling out investments made by the Blackstone Group.
Company executive Doug Reilly, commenting on the mortgage M&A market, had this to say: “It seems we need to take 20 girls to the alter just to marry one”…
A federal judge last week granted discovery to attorneys for a hedge fund representing one group of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders as it seeks to challenge the government’s August 2012 “net worth sweep” that effectively confiscates both GSEs’ profits. Fairholme Capital Management, founded by Wall Street veteran Bruce Berkowitz, controls roughly $2.4 billion (face value) of Fannie and Freddie "junior" preferred. Thanks to the September 2008 government takeover of the two firms, the U.S. Treasury controls the senior preferred and is effectively the owner of the two GSEs.
The effort to develop a common mortgage-backed security platform has a budget estimated at up to $300 million, funded by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but the GSEs’ conservator is saying little about its progress. In the nearly six months since the FHFA filed articles of incorporation for the entity creating the common securitization platform, the agency remains silent on key issues related to the project, including the size of its operating budget.
A group of 14 Republican senators led by Louisiana's David Vitter told the Federal Housing Finance Agency that it should stand fast against any notion of lifting the suspension of contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to two housing trust funds. The GOP senators dispatched a letter last week to FHFA Director Mel Watt, countering a plea signed by 33 Democrats in January calling on the new agency director to immediately authorize GSE funding to the National Housing Trust Fund and the Capital Magnet Fund.
Yet another defendant in the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s massive litigation effort against some of the nation’s largest lenders for bad mortgage-backed securities sales to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has settled. The FHFA announced last week that Societe Generale has agreed to pay $122 million to settle a suit by the Finance Agency regarding non-agency MBS purchased by the two GSEs during 2006.
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks will now be required to report directly any suspected fraud to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network under the terms of a final rule. Published in the Feb. 25 Federal Register, the final rule adopts “without significant change” FinCEN’s November 2011 proposal to require the GSEs to file suspicious activity reports directly with FinCEN rather than through their own regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
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